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[In 1917 I made a study of the history of the Iranian
system of time-reckoning, with a view to writing an article on the
subject in a Persian review. This took me at that time beyond the
scope of the intended article, and the idea was ultimately dropped. I
had, however, made a number of notes on that subject. Two years ago I
came across these notes which again roused my interest in this
question. I decided to carry out the original intention and, instead
of throwing away these notes on which a considerable time had been
spent, to incorporate them in a monograph on this somewhat complicated
question. The work is already in the printer's hands, and will, I
hope, be soon at the disposal of Persian scholars. I thought, however,
it might be useful to give in English, as concisely as possible, the
conclusion reached in the Persian work which amounts to some 350
pages, with some of the principal arguments supporting the opinion
expressed therein.]
The Iranian calendar2, like the calendars of many other
nations, had many
variations, each belonging to a different historical
period or to a different geographical region. The influence of
neighboring cultures, the customs of kindred races, or the change of
the climate due to the southward and westward movement of the Iranians
in their migration from their original home, are among the factors
capable of affecting changes in the whole system or in some details of
it. We have records of at least six more or less different calendars
in Iran, during the Islamic period, besides the well-known Muhammadan
and widely used Yazdegerdian systems of time reckoning.3
The latter, which was, at least down to the eleventh century of the
Christian era, the calendar most commonly used in Iran after the
Arabian calendar, and which has survived less widely used till the
present century, was the same as the official calendar of the Persian
empire in the Sasanian period (of course, with the exception of the
era). This is hardly questionable, though we have no contemporary
report of that period except as to the names of the months. All our
information regarding the pre-Islamic calendar is derived from works
composed later than the 8th century AD. Nevertheless, we have no
reason to doubt the statements of the learned Persians of post-Sasanian
times as to the calendar of their not very remote ancestors. There is
also an older reference to the Persian year in a short notice by
Quintus Curtius Rufus, a historian of the first century AD and
biographer of Alexander the Great, from which it may be inferred that
the Persian year in his time did not differ from the Zoroastrian year
of later centuries. This author declares that "The Magians
used to sing a native song. There followed the Magians 365 young men
clothed in purple (crimson) mantles equal in number to the days of the
year. For with the Persians too the year is divided into the same
number of days."4 The Persian year as we know it
in the Islamic period was, in fact, a vague year of 365 days, with
twelve months each of thirty days, with the exception of the eighth
month, which had thirty-five days or, rather, thirty days plus another
five supplementary days, or epagomenae, added to it. The only
difference between this year and the year in use in early Sasanian
times was in the place of the epagomenae, as we shall see.
Moreover, we know that the Armenians and Cappadocians to the west
of Persia, as well as the Sogdians, the Khwarazmians and the
Sistanians in the east, were all using calendars which, though the
names of the months were in each case different, were, save for the
place of the epagomenae in most of them, exactly the same as the
Persian. 5 Most probably all these six calendars had a
common origin. Now we have fortunately Armenian documents showing the
dates of some Armenian months and days in the fourth, sixth, and
seventh centuries (mostly collected by E. Dulaurier 6).
These dates correspond exactly with the positions which the
corresponding Persian days of the vague year would have occupied in
the Julian year at that time, according to backward calculation, the
only difference being that during a part of the year there would have
been a difference of five days owing to the different places of the
epagomenae.7 A similar inference may be drawn from the
Cappadocian dates, with their Julian correspondents, preserved in the
writings of St. Epiphanus, the bishop of Constantia or Salamis
(Cyprus), and relating to his own time. Here again we find that the
Cappadocian dates occupy in the Julian year exactly the same places as
the corresponding Persian dates would have occupied if the Persian
vague year had been in use in that period (of course, again with five
days difference due to the different places of epagomenae in the
year). These dates belong to the years AD 367 and 368, in the first of
which Epiphanus became the bishop of the above-mentioned metropolis.8
There are still other indirect evidences of the use of the same
Persian year in Sasanian times, some of which were discussed in my
article in BSOS., vol. ix, 1.9 Thus I think the existence
in Sasanian and even earlier periods, of the same vague year as we
find in later centuries in Persia, and which is up to the present day
the calendar year of the followers of the Mazdayasnian religion, can
be reasonably taken as an established fact. This calendar is the best
known among all Iranian systems of time reckoning in ancient or middle
ages, and is generally referred to as the Persian, Parsi, Mazdayasnian,
Zoroastrian, or Young-Avestan calendar. We shall use this last term in
the following pages to designate this particular system as distinct
from other Iranian calendars of ancient times, such as Old-Avestan and
Old-Persian, both of which will also be discussed here. It is the
calendar of historical times and, as stated above, was in general use
long before the Arabian conquest of Persia and for several centuries
afterward.10 The later history of this calendar is more or
less clear, but its earlier development and the date of its first use
in Iran is controversial.
The Y.A. month name found in the Pahlavi parchment of Awraman
(No.3), according to the reading of Cowley, Unvala, and Nyberg, shows
that the use of these names, and most probably also of the calendar to
which these months belong, goes back as far as the first century BC.11
On the other hand, the existence of two other old Iranian calendars is
attested by the Behistun
inscription, and proved by deduction from the Avestan texts. Also
the use of the Syro-Macedonian calendar in Iran in the Macedonian and
Parthian periods is indisputable. The latter might have been in use in
official circles and State documents 12 side by side with
the Young-Avestan, which may have been the people's calendar, but the
two former (Old-Avestan and Old-Persian) must have preceded the Young-Avestan.
Therefore the question is often asked and discussed as to when the
latter was instituted. The answer is not easy to give, as the
available data are very limited. For more than two centuries many
scholars have tried to solve the problem, and have reached different
conclusions. Freret,13 Gibert,14 Bailly,15
Drouin,16 West,17 and many others have discussed
the question, and have suggested dates for its introduction, but their
suggestions do not seem to be wholly satisfactory.
Gutschmid,18 though he has made a profound study of the
general subject of the Iranian calendar, was, however, misled on this
point (like Gibert before him) by his own misunderstanding of a
passage in the book of the Persian astronomer Kushyar (tenth century)
as to the coincidence of the sun's entry into Aries with the Persian
month Adar in the time of the Sasanian king, Khosraw I (Anosharvan).
Thinking that the passage in question meant that the equinox was on
the first day of Adar, Gutschmid made this wrong interpretation the
basis of his calculation, and came to the conclusion that the Y.A.
calendar was introduced in 411 BC. This view found acceptance among
later students of the question for some time.19
Marquart, however, in the last part of his Untersuchungen zur
Geschichte von Eran, p. 210, went a step further in the solution
of this problem. He made, indeed, a remarkable contribution towards
the solving of different questions relating to the Iranian calendar in
the said book, as well as in his paper "Das Nauroz",
published in the Modi Memorial Volume in 1930. Nevertheless,
his conjecture on the date of the introduction of the Y.A. calendar in
Persia does not solve the difficulties involved by the contradictory
indications. Adopting West's method of starting from the contemporary Kadimi
Parsi New Year's Day, which, take into account the four-yearly
retrogressions of one day, accords with the well-known fact that the
Persian year began on 16th June in the year 632, during which
Yazdegird III, the last Sasanian king, was enthroned, and making it
the basis of the backward calculation, he reached almost the same
conclusion as West, with only about twenty years' difference. This
difference was due to the fact that West had relied on the Persian
dates, whereas Marquart like Gutschmid, has rightly preferred the
Armenian dates 20 because, as a result of an error
committed on the occasion of the first intercalation, namely the
omission of the five supplementary days in that year, the Persian
dates in a great part of the year were five days in advance compared
with the Armenian.21 Both scholars, however, have taken it
for granted that the Persian year at the time of its adoption must
have begun on the vernal equinox, in other words that the first day of
the month of Frawardin was at that time the first day of spring.
Therefore West has arrived at the years 510-505 and Marquart at
493-486 BC as being the date of the introduction of the Y.A. calendar
in Iran. Both authors attribute this important reform to Darius I, who
according to them officially established the said calendar in the
Persian empire. But it must be stated that the theory of the Persian
New Year's Day originally falling on the vernal equinox is not
supported by any convincing proof. The idea may have arisen from the
impression made on the minds of those acquainted with the Persian
calendar by Malikshah's reform in the eleventh century and the
resulting celebration of the Nawruz on the vernal equinox, which
prevails in Iran down to the present day. The legend of Zoroastrian
cosmogony, according to which the "seven planets" including
the Sun in Aries,22 were in their hypsoma or exaltation
points at the beginning of the seventh millennium of world cycles, and
Zoroaster's intercalation of the year to bring it back again to the
same position (i.e. the sun in Aries on New Year's Day), found partly
in Pahlavi works and partly in Old-Arabic books, can hardly be
advanced as evidence in this connection.
All the above-mentioned hypotheses about the Y.A. calendar have
been based on the supposition that the Persian year, even in Sasanian
times, was a vague year of exactly 365 days, without any intercalation
whatever in the civil year for making good the difference (of about a
quarter of a day) between such a year and the tropic year. This
presumption is, however, contrary to our oldest reports of the Iranian
calendar by early Muslim astronomers. These reports are expressly to
the effect that an intercalation of one month in the Persian year
every 120 (or 116) years was more or less regularly carried out in
pre-Islamic times.23 It was apparently the idea of
coordinating this tradition with the presupposed adoption of the
Egyptian calendar system in Iran in the fifth century that led
Cavaignac 24 to advance a totally different theory on this
matter. This is based on accepting literally the statements of the
Muhammadan astronomers regarding the actual intercalation in the
Sasanian period even in the Persian civil year, and at the same time
admitting the introduction in Persia of the Egyptian calendar without
any change whatsoever (except, of course, for the substitution of
Persian names for the months). The prevalent opinion, as it is
well-known, is that there were two sorts of year in use: the civil
year which was in general use, and the ecclesiastic, used only for
religious purposes, that the first was a vague year, and that the
intercalation was limited to the religious year. It is also generally
believed that, in adopting the Egyptian vague year, the Iranians
changed the year's beginning from the season corresponding at that
time to the Egyptian New Year (December) to the vernal equinox. Now
Cavaignac, though he admits that the Egyptian calendar was introduced
in the fifth century BC, is of opinion that originally the Persian
month Frawardin, and not the month Dai, stood for the first Egyptian
month, namely Toth. Moreover, according to his theory, though this
vague year (without any intercalation) possibly has been since used to
a certain extent by the mass of people, nevertheless the Babylonian
(or the Old-Persian used in the Behistun
inscription) remained the official calendar of Persia until the
fall of the Achaemenian empire, after which it was superseded by the
Syro-Macedonian calendar, which lasted from Alexander's conquest till
the rise of the Sasanian dynasty. He thinks, therefore, that it was in
the Sasanian period that the Y.A. or Mazdayasnian calendar became the
official and general means of time-reckoning in Persia, and that it
was in that epoch that the intercalation in the Y.A. year was
instituted, after which the year remained nearly fixed during the
Sasanian period with the New Year about the time of the summer
solstice. He believes also that the intercalary month was inserted at
the first intercalation after Shahrewar, the sixth month (possibly in
the fourth century AD) as a second Shahrewar, and that on the next
occasion a second Mihr was added to the year and so forth. As a matter
of fact, the beginning of the Egyptian year in AD 632 was only ninety
days prior to the Persian New Year's Day, the Egyptian being on the
18th March and the Persian on the 16th June, which
[9] difference
might be easily interpreted as the consequence of three intercalations
of one month each, during the Sasanian period (406 years.)
Of all the different theories proposed about the date of the
introduction of the Egyptian calendar system in Persia, i.e. the
creation or the official adoption of the Y.A. calendar, only two are,
I think, more or less consistent with many of the known facts and
supported, to a certain extent, by tangible arguments. These are those
suggested by Marquart and Cavaignac. But each of these two theories
has, nevertheless, its weak points and is far from being
satisfactorily established or indisputable. They cannot, therefore, be
considered as a final solution of this difficult problem.
Cavaignac's thesis agrees, it is true, in every respect with
Biruni's statements 25 regarding the old Iranian calendar,
namely that the pre-Islamic year of Persia was a stable or fixed year
beginning at (or near) the summer solstice and maintained around that
point by a 120-yearly intercalation of one month. But besides being
incompatible with the contents of the Pahlavi books on this matter and
with other evidence in favor of the vague year,26 this
theory cannot be brought into harmony with what we know of the
parallelism of the Persian year with the Armenian, the Cappadocian,
the Sogdian and the Khwarazmian years without the assumption of a very
unlikely, if not impossible, condition, namely the general application
of exactly the same intercalatory system to all the calendars of these
different and often politically separate nations. Moreover, it must be
pointed out that Biruni himself, who is our principal authority on
this subject, is not consistent in this particular point, and his
books contain many contradictory passages implying different times for
the beginning of the old Iranian year. For instance, his statement
regarding the last intercalation, namely that it was the eighth one
and that it was executed through the intercalation of a second Aban, i.e.
the eighth month (or a second Aban and a second Mihr together), can
only be based on the supposition of the original Nawruz (1st day of
the month Frawardin) having been on or about the vernal equinox, and
of the latter having been always considered theoretically a New Year's
Day.
On the other hand, the theory of West and Marquart of placing the
official introduction of the Y.A. calendar in the Persian empire in
the middle or the last part of the reign of Darius I, and attributing
this reform to that monarch himself, who according to these scholars
established the first day of the year on the vernal equinox, is also
irreconcilable with the contents of the Afrin
gahambar and the Bundahishn
on this question. According to the first of these two Mazdayasnian
literary documents the season festival maidyoshahem corresponds
to 15 Tir. But the Bundahishn states expressly that from maidyoshahem
till maidyarem the night increases, and from maidyarem
to maidyoshahem the night decreases and the day increases,27
though this book interprets maidyoshahem to be the 11th day of
Tir (i.e. the first of the five days of that gahambar) probably
following its source not very strictly.28 Marquart is
certainly right when he expresses
[11] the opinion
that the Mazdayasnian traditions are in this respect contradictory and
that the different passages of the Bundahishn are not
consistent. For while the summer solstice or the time when the night
begins to increase in length is put, as we have seen in the
above-mentioned passage, on the 11th day of Tir (or, rather, strictly
on the 15th), it is declared in another passage of the same
book immediately following the former that "in the feast of hamaspathmaidyem
that is the epagomenae at the end of the month Spandarmad the days and
nights are equal [in length]". Nevertheless, his conclusion does
not seem to be incontestable. He apparently considers the
last-mentioned passage of the Bundahishn (relating to the
equality in the length of the day and night during the five
supplementary days of the year), as well as that part of the former
passage implying the identity of maidyoshahem with the summer
solstice, as authentic; but he thinks that the gloss placing this gahambar
about the middle of Tir, and maidyarem about the middle of the
month of Dai, is a wrong interpretation added by the author of the Bundahishn
to the original tradition, which was based on the lost parts of the
Avesta. Therefore he seems to be of the opinion that maidyoshahem was
originally, i.e. at the time of the adoption of the Y.A. calendar, on
or about the 1st day of Tir, and maidyarem on or about the
beginning of the month of Dai.
Although the original concordance between maidyoshahem and
the beginning of the month of Tir in the Old-Avestan calendar (i.e.
the calendar of the Avestan people before the adoption of the Egyptian
system) is more than possible, the traditional and rather canonical
fixing of the places of gahambars in the Mazdayasnian months
is, nevertheless, certainly based on the older and authentic sources.
These
[12] places are
given in the part of the Avesta called Afrin
Gahambar. Though it is generally believed that those
explanatory passages relating to the places of these season festivals
are addenda of later date, interpolated as glosses in the original
Avestan text, there is no reason to doubt the antiquity of their
contents, which I suppose is as old as the introduction or the
official establishment of the Y.A. calendar in Iran.29 The gahambars
are thus fixed at an early date in these places and are stabilized in
the months of the religious and fixed (vihêjakîk) year.
Relying on the presupposed principle that the Y.A. year originally
(i.e. at the time of its introduction or, rather, its official
recognition by the State and "Church" in Persia) began on
the vernal equinox, I myself two years ago placed the date of the
institution of this calendar in the second decade of the fifth century
BC, and have tried to suggest the exact date of this reform.30
The reasons for this conjecture are given in a paper read before the
International Congress of Orientalists held in Rome in 1935 (section
iv, sitting of 26th September), as well as more fully in my
above-mentioned Persian book entitled Essay on the Iranian Calendar.
A New Conjecture
A later study of the question, however, has led me to change
somewhat my former opinion. The conclusion reached is this. The
abandonment by the Zoroastrian community of their traditional Old-Avestan
calendar, and by the Persian court and Government of the Old-Persian
or early Achaemenian calendar, in favor of the Egyptian system took
place during the Achaemenian period. This reform may not have been
[13] effected in
both cases (the "Church" and the State) simultaneously, and
most probably one preceded the other by a considerable time.
Nevertheless the final union of the two, i.e. the religious community
and the court, in this matter must have been accomplished in the first
decade of the second half of the fifth century BC, probably about 441.
It was also then, I think, that the beginning of the year was placed
near the vernal equinox, and not far from the Babylonian zagmûg
(New Year's festival) and that the intercalation system was
instituted. The reasons which have led me to this conclusion are as
follows: --
There is no doubt that the Achaemenian kings used, in the early
part of the reign of that dynasty, a calendar based most probably on
the Babylonian (perhaps indirectly through the Elamite or Assyrian
calendar). Their months were running strictly or almost parallel with
the Babylonian months and their year must have been a luni-solar one
like that of the Babylonians. The only difference between these two
calendars was in the names of the months, and perhaps also in the fact
that, while the Babylonian year began near the vernal equinox, the
beginning of the Persian year was probably near the autumnal equinox.
This last theory, if it should be satisfactorily proved, would suggest
that this practice was a survival from that of the early ancestors of
this branch of Iranian stock, as the name sared in Avesta and thard
in Darius's inscription
for the year and their similarity with the Indian sarad
(autumnal season) also may suggest. We shall call this Achaemenian or
south-western Iranian calendar here Old-Persian.31
[14] The people
among whom Zoroaster preached his new religion and founded the first
Mazdayasnian community (whom we may conveniently call "the
Avestan people"), on the other hand, appear to have had a totally
different system of time reckoning which, there are strong reasons to
believe, was an ancient form of the Iranian calendar of early Aryan
(probably north-eastern) origin and of a rural character, beginning
with or about the summer solstice, This calendar which we shall call
in the following pages Old-Avestan has, in many respects, great
similarity with the oldest Indian (Vedic) calendar and in some aspects
also with the post-Vedic calendar, and both (the Indian and Avestan)
may have had a common origin. The year of the Old-Avestan calendar,
which seems to have been called yâr, appears to have been
first divided into two main parts, from the summer solstice (maidyoshahem
or mid-summer) to the winter solstice (maidyarem or mid-year)
and vice versa, exactly like the old Vedic year, which was also
originally divided in the same way into two ayanas (uttarâyana
and daksinâyana).32 The further division of the
year in later
[15] times in
India into more and shorter seasons (ritu) up to six in number, which
took place there gradually, has also great resemblance to the similar
division of the year into six seasons (yâirya ratavô) or gahs
among the kindred race of the Iranians, though the Iranian seasons,
unlike the Indian, were of unequal length.33 This later and
gradual division of the year in both countries certainly took place as
a consequence of the climatic change encountered by Indo-Aryans and
Iranians during their migration southwards, and hence the difference
in the way of division. The Old-Avestan year began, as already stated,
with maidyoshahem or the summer solstice, and was presumably of
360 days with two parts, each of 180 days, like the Indian ayanas.
The second part began accordingly with maidyarem, near the
winter solstice. The very name of this gahambar, which
certainly means mid-year with its description or its epithet in the
Avesta indicating "the cold bringer" (Visperad
1.2, 2.2), testifies to the year's commencing with summer. Also
there is in Yasht
8.36, perhaps further support in favor of this theory. It is said
there that when (or after) "the year [again] comes to the end
for men the counselor princes (? chieftains) and the wild animals,
[who] house in the mountains and the shy [animals who] graze (or
wander) in the plains, watch [when it (the Tishtrya) is in]
rising".34 The Tishtrya, which is generally held to be
Sirius, had its first heliacal rising in July in the first half of the
first millennium BC (in north-eastern Iran it rose about 26th-27th
July, i.e. four weeks after the solstice). Thus the people might have
been waiting and longing impatiently for this rain-bringing star in
the first days of the summer. The epithets of the other gahambars,
as well as the attributes by
[16] which they
are qualified in the Avesta, also all agree with these supposed
positions of maidyoshahem and maidyarem. Again, the
verse of the Vendidad
(18.9) which refers to Marshavan, "who could through
his wrong religion seduce one to commit the sin of not having devoted
(neglecting to devote) himself to the study [of the holy text],
continuously for a period comprising three springs (thrizaremaêm),"
deserves attention. Could it not be interpreted as suggesting that the
spring was the last part of the year, and with the third spring, a
period of three full years was completed, which would mean that the
year began with summer?
There must have been, in the Old-Avestan calendar, no doubt in
practice, some sort of intercalation in order to keep these seasons
and the agricultural and religious festivals which were at the end of
the seasons more or less in their fixed places in the tropical year.
But the way, by means of which this stabilization was achieved, is as
little known to us as that by which the old Indo-Aryans prevented the
old Vedic year from becoming a vague year. If the year (Old-Avestan)
was lunar, i.e. a year of 354 days, then the intercalation must have
taken place through the addition of an extra month each two or three
years. Apparently this was the opinion of Marquart, who refers to this
Old-Avestan year as also vermutlich ein gebundenes Mondjahr.35
The analogy with the old Indian Vedic year and Biruni's report of a
year of 360 days in the time of Peshdadian dynasty,36
i.e. in the prehistoric Iranian period, however, make the
identification of the Old-Avestan year with this sort of year (i.e. a
year of 360 days) more acceptable.37 We may also accept
Biruni's statement as to the
[17] method of
stabilizing the Old-Avestan year, namely by the intercalation of one
month of thirty days every six years 38 [and perhaps
sometimes five years], though a supplementary intercalation of another
month each 120 years, which he reports also in the same passage about
that calendar, seems to be very unlikely in those ancient times.
This calendar must have been in use when Zoroaster appeared among
the people whom we have called the Avestan people, and it must have
remained in use with or without some small changes for a considerable
time, thus becoming later the calendar of the early Mazdayasnian
community. Therefore it must have existed in south-western Iran in the
time of the first Achaemenian rulers as the religious calendar of the
Zoroastrians of that region side by side with the Old-Persian
calendar, which was the official system for the computation of time
for the State as well as for the non-Zoroastrian people of that
country.
The first reform
The contact between Persian and Egyptian culture which began with
the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses in 525 BC must naturally have
attracted the attention of the rising nation to that old and famous
civilization. Darius, who had accompanied Cambyses to Egypt and had
stayed there for some years before his accession to the Persian
throne, returned to that country, after he became king, in 517 BC. He
took a very great
[18] interest in
the Egyptian nation and their culture, treated the Egyptians kindly,
became very popular with them, and was recognized by them as one of
their law-givers. It is possible he took a good many Persian nobles,
sages, and religious leaders with him to Egypt, and be brought with
him, or summoned, to Susa the high priest of the famous Sais
temple, Uzahor by name (according to an inscription now in the
Vatican).39 The intercourse between the two nations which
developed particularly with the friendly attitude of Persia towards
Egypt and the good feeling felt by the latter toward the former, may
certainly have had some influence on the institutions of Persia.
Therefore it is not unreasonable to assume that it was at or about
this period that the high authorities of the Zoroastrian community in
Persia adopted the Egyptian system of time reckoning, and thus
introduced the Y.A. calendar. The similarity of principle involved by
the theoretical beginning of the year in both cases (among the
Egyptian and the Zoroastrian community) on or near the heliacal rising
of Sirius may have prepared the ground for a rapprochement in this
matter. The original New Year of Egypt was based on the time of the
first heliacal rising of the dog-star (Sirius), called by them Sopdet,
which in ancient times nearly coincided with the beginning of the rise
of the Nile.40 This was the greatest festival of the
Egyptians, for the rising of the Nile was the principal source of
their happiness and prosperity. Similarly the heliacal rising of Tishtrya
(generally believed to be the Avestan name for Sirius), which was
looked for as the bringer of much needed rain, the most vital
necessity for the Persian cultivator during the season of excessive
heat, must have been in that country as great a blessing as the rise
of the Nile to the Egyptians.41 Consequently this point of
time (or the first day of the month during which this star rose) had
most probably been fixed, as has already been stated, as the New Year
of the original people of the Avesta in the pre-Zoroastrian and early
Zoroastrian periods.42 Moreover, the Egyptian system with a
year of a fixed number of days (365) without intercalation (for the
omitted fraction of day) may have appeared to the minds of the
Zoroastrian priests, especially for liturgical purposes much simpler
and more convenient than their own. Consequently they adopted that
system and introduced the so-called Young-Avestan calendar into the
Zoroastrian church and community. This community may have been by this
time encouraged, and perhaps even favorably regarded and supported by
the court, following the anti-Magi policy of Darius after the slaying
of the Magian usurper and general massacre of this caste in 522 BC.
Thus the reform consisted in giving up the Old-Avestan calendar and
copying exactly the Egyptian vague year in all respects even in the
place of the New Year. The Zoroastrian community adopted the same
system of twelve months of thirty days each, with a yearly
intercalation of five days at the end of the year instead of making up
for the deficiency of eleven or five days in their former year, by a
three- or six-yearly intercalation. They kept, however, the essential
and most important parts of their former calendar, namely the natural
and religious season festivals or gahambars and, of course,
they replaced the Egyptian month names by the Old-Avestan
(pre-Zoroastrian) month names or (in most cases) by the names of their
own supreme deity and archangels.43
If the Zoroastrian names of some months were already in use, the
month of the highest divinity (Ahura Mazda), which was till then the
seventh month of the year, i.e. at the beginning of the second
half-year, coincided at that time with the first Egyptian month Toth,
and both corresponded, roughly, to the first month of winter.
Therefore that month became the first month of the new calendar. If,
however, the month names of the Y.A. calendar were introduced at the
same time as the calendar itself was adopted, then it was natural that
the first month of the new calendar should be named after the same
highest divinity dadhvå (modern Dai), the epithet of Ahura
Mazda.
The order of the Amesha Spentas in the month names which has
so far puzzled the scholars may, I think, be explained as follows:
Putting the month of the creator on the top (the beginning of the
year), the order of the Archangels is followed, not according to their
well-known and familiar succession, but according to their range in
sitting before the throne of Ohrmazd in the heaven on each side in
accordance with their age and sex, as given in the Great
Bundahishn. Their sequence is only broken now and then by the
months consecrated to the older deities. After the supreme divinity
comes first Vohu Manah from the right hand, then Spenta
Armaiti from the left, then (interrupted by a non-Angelic month) Asha
Vahishta from the right, then the twin Angels Haurvatat and
Ameretat from the left (though separated again by a stranger)
and then at last Khshathra Vairya from the right.
The Egyptian habit of naming their months and days after different
divinities also was not apparently without influence in the
denomination of the new Mazdayasnian months and days. The name of the
first day of the Egyptian months was identical with the name of the
first month, likewise in the Y.A. calendar the first day of every
month is named Ohrmazd (Ahurahe Mazdao), which is the
name of the supreme God, whose epithet was dadhvå (gen. dathushô),
the patron of the first month. Again the consecration of the five
supplementary days at the end of the year and perhaps also the 19th
day of the first month 44 to the reverence of manes in both
calendars (Egyptian and Y.A.) does not seem to be wholly incidental.
Now, if we assume the date of this reform as being about 510 BC, we
shall obtain the following correspondences: the Egyptian year began at
that time on 29th December (Julian) and consequently the beginning of
the Iranian year, i.e. the first day of the month Dai, which
corresponds to the first day of the Egyptian month Toth, must have
been placed also at the same point; the summer solstice fell on the
20th June 45 and the third day of the month Tir, about when
the first day of the lunar month in that year (509 BC) also began 46;
the Egyptian epagomenae as well as the Persian andargâh or Gatha
days (five supplementary days of the year) were after the Egyptian
month, Mesori (twelfth month), and the parallel Persian month,
Adar, respectively, and corresponded to 24th-28th December; the month
Tir corresponded to 27th June-26th July, and thus the helical rising
of Sirius in Iran could have fallen in this month.47
If there is any truth in the tradition reported by Biruni (AB.,
pp. 233-4) to the effect that, after the coming of Zoroaster and the
[later] transfer by the Persian Kings of their residence from Balkh (Bactria)
to Fars and Babylon, the Persians paid [special] attention to matters
relating to their religion, renewed their astronomical observations,
and found that in the third year from the [last] intercalation, the
summer solstice preceded the beginning of the year by five days, and
that they then gave up the older reckoning and adopted the results of
their new computation, the explanation may be as follows: by adopting
the Egyptian system, an adjustment in the position of the Iranian
months in use up to that time was perhaps carried out. The mere act of
making the Iranian year conform with the Egyptian by making the
seventh month of the Old-Avestan calendar (the later Dai) parallel
(i.e. in full and strict correspondence) with Toth, the first Egyptian
month, would have necessarily caused a shift in the places of the
other Iranian months. For instance, if the month of Tir, which
according to our theory was the first month of the Old-Avestan year,
normally ought to have begun on, say, 2nd July, given that the reform
had not taken place in that year, it was bound to move a few days back
when the first day of Dai was put at the same position as the first
day of the Egyptian Toth (about 29th December), making Tir to
correspond to the Egyptian Phamenoth (27th June-26th July).
This hypothesis will also explain the position of the month of Dai
which, according to this, was originally in its logical and right
place as the month of the supreme God, whereas, in the later order of
the months in the Y.A. year, its position (the tenth month) always
seemed anomalous. It will account also for the unexpected length of
the gah (yâirya) ending with the gahambar of maidyarem
(eighty days instead of seventy-five) and the traditional place of
this gahambar on the 20th day of Dai (celebrated from 16th to 20th)
instead of 15th, which was to be expected as the second pole of the
Old-Avestan year opposite to maidyoshahem on 15th Tir. Both
these points can thus be explained. As it has been stated, the
Egyptian epagomenae being at the end of the year and immediately
preceding the month Toth, the Persian andargâh should have
taken their place at the end of the month Adar immediately before the
month Dai. This would have made the interval between the 1st Tir and
the 1st Dai 185 days instead of 180 days, which was according to our
assumption the original interval. Consequently the length of the last yâirya
(gâh) of the year ending with maidyarem would have
increased from seventy-five to eighty days. In the second and last
reform, however, when the Y.A. calendar was officially recognized by
the State and was made the civil calendar of the empire, the Gatha
days were removed from the end of Adar to the end of Spandarmad, which
was fixed at that time as the end of the year. But the length of the yâirya
from ayathrem to maidyarem was not readjusted
accordingly and still remained in Persian reckoning eighty days in
length. Therefore the maidyarem had advanced five days from its
usual place in the month of Dai, which must have been at that time on
the 15th of that month, to the 20th of the same month where it was
then stabilized (in the religious or vihêjakîk year).48
The Khwarazmians, unlike the Persians, carried out correctly the
necessary adjustment due on this account, as appears from the length
of the intervals between their gahambars corresponding to the
Avestan and Persian ayathrem, maidyarem, and hamaspathmaidyem,
i.e. arthamîn (?), binkhajâchî raid (?), and maithsokhan
raid (?) respectively. The interval between the two former is
(AB., p.237-8) seventy-five days, and between the second and the last,
eighty days. This may point to the antiquity of the Khwarazmian
calendar compared with that of the Armenians or the Cappadocians, etc.
The positions of the Khwarazmian gahambars differ from those of
the Persian by five months, and from the original places given in Afrin-Gahambar
by three months. This fact may suggest that the Khwarazmians followed
the Persians in the matter of intercalation up to the third one
(presumably executed about 81 BC), after which the former ceased to
intercalate, perhaps in consequence of the weakening of the cultural
relations between the two peoples, following the Scythian invasion of
Bactria and the adjacent countries about 130 BC.
The Second Reform
The positions of the gahambars in the Y.A. calendar are not
easy to explain and have been the subject of much discussion. If the
Y.A. year originally (i.e. at the time of its official adoption and
the institution of the intercalation system) began with the vernal
equinox and the month of Frawardin, the gahambar of hamaspathmaidyem
would have then fallen on the last day (or days) of winter, but then maidyoshahem
(or the midsummer festival) with its traditional place on 15th Tir
would not have corresponded either with the middle of the well-known
summer of three months or with the middle of the bigger summer of six
months, i.e. the brighter and warmer half of the year from the vernal
to the autumnal equinox.
The explanation proposed by Cama 49 for the apparent
lack of harmony in the arrangement of the places of the gahambars
in the year, which was considered for some time by most scholars to be
satisfactory, is also open to some objection. Cama tried to find the
solution of this rather peculiar arrangement by ascribing the
institution of the different gahambars to different periods.
According to him, in the early times, when the year was divided into
two parts only, namely a summer of seven months and a winter of five
months, four gahambars, viz. maidyoshahem, ayathrem,
maidyarem, and hamaspathmaidyem were created as the
feasts of the middle and the end of the said Avestan summer (hama)
and winter (zyam or zayana) respectively. But the other
two, i.e. maidyozarem and Paitishahem were introduced in
later times after the well known four seasons of the year, each of
about three months, had come in use, thus marking the middle point of
the spring and the end of the summer (of three months) respectively.
Apparently Cama also believed that the Mazdayasnian year began
originally on the vernal equinox, as his explanation of the places of maidyozarem
and paitishahem shows.
That the maidyoshahem originally corresponded, as is implied
by the literal meaning of the word, to the middle point of the
Zoroastrian summer of seven months is, no doubt, indisputable,50
though this "Zoroastrian summer" meant only the 210 days'
interval between hamaspathmaidyem and ayathrem, without
implying by any means a stable correspondence between the first of
these two gahambars and the day immediately preceding the
vernal equinox. It is also true that the gahambars were not all
instituted simultaneously. Also it must be admitted that in the later
Sasanian times, as well as in the early centuries of Islam, the
original position of the vihêjakîk month Frawardin considered
as corresponding to the first month of the spring.51 But as
stated above, this theory of the first day of (vihêjakîk )
Frawardin being on the vernal equinox does not agree with the
statement of the author of the Bundahishn
regarding the increasing of the night and decreasing of the day from maidyoshahem
onwards, or with the epithets given to the gahambars in the
Avesta (Visperad,
1.2; 2.2). Maidyoshahem is described there as the time when
the mowing of the grass takes place, paitishahem as the time of
the harvest of the corn, and ayathrem as the season of driving
the cattle home from summer pasturage (i.e. the time of retiring from
the field into winter dwellings) and of the mating of the sheep (also Yasna,
1.9, 2.9, 3.11, 4.14). If these gahambars were originally
celebrated, as the equinoctial theory of the new year implies, on the
150th, 180th, and 210th days after the vernal equinox, which dates
correspond roughly to the 3rd July, 16th September, and 16th October
respectively in the Gregorian calendar, the seasons would have been
too far advanced in Iran for the agricultural and pastoral occupations
attributed to them to have been carried out, as Marquart rightly
pointed out in the case of the two latter (Untersuchungen, p.
205). Therefore we may reasonably hold to the description of maidyoshahem
in the Bundahishn
as the starting point of the shortening of the days and the
lengthening of the nights, and put it on the summer solstice or the
middle point of the longer summer (the warmer half of the year). We
may also at the same time admit as correct the place given to this gahambar
in the Mazdayasnian year in the Avesta, namely 15th Tir (Afrin
Gahambar 7-12, Wolff's translation of the Avesta, p. 303).52
This agrees also with the place given to it in the Bundahishn,
except that the latter book is less strict when it places the
beginning of the shortening of the diurnal arc on the first day of the
five festival days (11th Tir) instead of the last (15th), which is the
real gahambar day.
Undoubtedly it was these considerations that led Roth 53
to suppose that the beginning of the old Iranian year (1st Frawardin)
was originally on 8th March (Gregorian), and Bartholomae,54
Geiger,55 and others have followed him in this supposition.56
This comes to thirteen days before the vernal equinox. This was the
position of the Y.A. year in the third quarter of the fifth century
BC.
This theory explains satisfactorily many difficult points mentioned
above, relating to apparent anomalies, and it agrees with almost all
our data on this matter. The only remaining difficulties are in: (1)
the passage of the Bundahishn
indicating the equality of the length of the day and night at the time
of the festival called hamaspathmaidyem, to which reference was
made above, and (2) the meaning of the word maidyozarem, which
is supposed to be mid-spring. Both these points, if they cannot be
otherwise explained, may imply that the year began on the equinox, and
could be advanced as evidence in support of that opinion. L. Gray
tries to explain this inconsistency in the tradition by supposing that
"the year originally began with the vernal equinox, and
solsticial festivals were introduced later when the actual beginning
of the year had receded by thirteen days (i.e. to 8th March)".57
But as the gahambars had nothing to do with the civil (Oshmurtîk)
year before AD 1006, and as their places were fixed in the vihêjakîk
or fixed religious year, they must have been established in the places
given in the Afrin
Gahambaraccording to their positions in one particular year,
and not according to their individual positions in separate years. For
if the place of Maidyozarem had been originally, on the
forty-fifth day after the vernal equinox, it would have fallen on 28th
Ardwahisht, when the beginning of the civil year had receded thirteen
days in the tropic year.
Therefore all the six gahambars must have been stabilized in
their traditional places in the (vihêjakîk) Y.A. year
simultaneously when the intercalation was introduced. Consequently
these places represent the positions which these season festivals
happened to occupy in the civil or the vague year at that date, i.e.
they had reached those places on account of the retrogression of the
civil year against the tropical year. These festivals then became
fixed, being celebrated always on the same days of the vihêjakîk
or religious year, as registered in the Afrin
Gahambar, and corresponded thus approximately always with the
same astronomical positions in the tropic year but advanced in the
civil year.58
The statement as to the equality of the day and night on hamaspathmaidyem
occurring in the Bundahishn
was in all probability due to a misunderstanding caused by the later
popular belief in the equinoctial beginning of the original year, an
opinion possibly having its origin in Zoroastrian mythology and
cosmogony, as already stated, which also, in its turn, may have been
influenced by the Babylonian zagmûg.59 As to the
meaning of maidyozarem, even if it could be proved that the
word zaremaya means spring, it is by no means certain that it
represented strictly the astronomical spring. This is very unlikely,
since such a notion (the division of the year into four equal parts as
it is at the present day) hardly existed among the Avestan people.60
It may rather have been a name for the earlier part of the Avestan
summer, which was seven months long, from hamaspathmaidyem till
ayathrem. In the long interval between these last-named
festivals some other holidays for rest and offering, besides
maidyoshahem in the middle, may have been considered necessary.
Therefore the forty-fifth day of this interval or the end of the first
three units 61 of time reckoning was added to the already
existing season festivals, and it was made a holiday of the season of
milk, honey, and juice. Thus this gahambar was probably
instituted much later than the other gahambars, just as the
Indian vasanta (or vasara) was most probably introduced
later than the other seasons. This Iranian festival which was
celebrated sixty days before the summer solstice and corresponded to
24th April (Gregorian), was called maidyozarem or (roughly) the
middle-point of spring in the popular (and not astronomical) sense of
the word, i.e. the season of the revivification of nature and
vegetation.62 It is curious that Thuravâhara, the
name of the Old-Persian month, corresponding to the second Babylonian
month Iyyâr, means also mid-spring, and that in 441 BC, when
according to our conjecture the Y.A. calendar was made the official
calendar of Persia, the first day of this month coincided with the
15th day of Ardwahisht, which has been stabilized as the vihêjakîk
day of maidyozarem in the Mazdayasnian year.63 It
must also be noted that the spring in most parts of Persia is very
short and that the weather changes from cold to excessive heat with a
short interval between the two.
The truth about the Old-Avestan season festivals is that although
they had their fixed places in the tropic year, they had nothing to do
with the well-known astronomical four seasons now in general use. None
of them is based on one of the four main points of the tropic year
(equinoxes and solstices) except maidyoshahem which, as the
beginning of the year, corresponded in principle to the summer
solstice and was the fundamental point of the year and the basis for
the calculation of all other seasons. Maidyarem was not the
name for the winter solstice, but since it was the middle point of the
year, which is the meaning of its name, and came 180 days after maidyoshahem
at the beginning of the second half-year, it fell naturally on (or
strictly speaking about) the opposite solstice or the second pole of
the year. Then counting backward and forward from maidyoshahem,64
the point 105 days or seven fortnights before it was made the first
day of the Avestan summer, and the day preceding this last point was
made a season festival called hamaspathmaidyem as the end of
retirement, or the end of the off-season, and the beginning of outdoor
or field work, and in the same way the point 105 days after maidyoshahem
was considered as the end of the summer (the festival of ayathrem).
Thus the Avestan winter began, in the same way, seventy-five days or
five fortnights before maidyarem and ended seventy-five days
after it. Consequently maidyoshahem became the middle point of
the Avestan summer of seven months (mid-summer) which now had three
festivals: one at the beginning (or, rather, the day preceding it),
one at the end, and one at the middle. The winter, being shorter, was
divided in two equal parts forming only two yâiryas (gahs),
but the summer, being longer, a further division took place 65
and two more festivals were created, viz. the festival of the harvest
(paitishahem), seventy-five days after maidyoshahem, and the
festival of high spring or the season of milk, butter, honey, and
blooming countryside (maidyozarem), sixty days before it.
Now it is possible that the Zoroastrian community, a considerable
time after the adoption of the Egyptian calendar system, noticed a
change in the position of their most important festivals. This change
was bound to take place as a consequence of neglecting the necessary
intercalation that was due on account of the omission, each year, of a
quarter of a day by which the real solar year (tropic) exceeds the
vague year. They realized then the necessity of some sort of
intercalation which, while compensating for the accumulated shortages
caused by omitted fractions would not interfere with the order of the
days in the months, and would cause no divergence between the
intercalated and the vague year in the names of the corresponding
days. The addition of a thirteenth month to the year was already known
to the Persians from the Babylonian calendar, also most probably from
the Old-Persian and the Elamite, as well as perhaps from the Old-Avestan
calendars. The intercalation of a month once each 120 years would
bring back every day of a vague year to the same Julian day to which
it had originally corresponded, though not exactly to its original
place in the tropical year. The establishment of such an
intercalation, which means the adoption of the vihêjakîk
(fixed) year, was probably simultaneous with the transference of the
year's commencement from the month Dai to the month Frawardin.
Consequently the established correspondence between the Egyptian and
Persian New Year was abandoned, and the Persian year began from that
time not far from the Babylonian rêsh shatti and its feast zagmûg.
This reform was an important step, and it was possibly connected with
some special factors. The successive revolts of Egypt, the killing of
the Persian Governor there, followed by a long struggle during the
first years of Artaxerxes, and the hatred of the Egyptians for this
monarch and his father on the one hand, and the growing intercourse
and rapprochement between Persians and Babylonians on the other, are
perhaps among the possible factors of the change.66
Artaxerxes I, whose residence was in Susa, where Nehemia took leave
from him in 445 (Nehemia,
1.1), transferred it later (perhaps owing to the destruction of
his palace by fire or to his conversion to a new faith (?)) to
Babylon, where Nehemia found him again in 433 (Nehemia, 8.6).67
The court remained in Babylon apparently for the most part until
Artaxerxes II moved again to Susa after 395.68 But besides
this and similar reasons for the reform of the calendar, can we not
seek the decisive factor in the conversion of the Achaemenian rulers
to the Zoroastrian religion? If this supposition should prove to be
correct, then it must have been on this occasion that a compromise was
effected by which the Zoroastrian New Year's feast was brought more or
less into harmony with the Babylonian zagmûg, and the
Old-Persian feast of Mithra was taken into the Avestan calendar. Thus
the court would have given up the Old-Persian and adopted the
Mazdayasnian calendar except for the beginning of the year. In this
last matter the Zoroastrian priests seem to have made a concession to
the desire of the king by fixing the New Year near to the vernal
equinox, and more particularly by the incorporation into the
Mazdayasnian year, of the feast of Mithra, which appears to have been
the greatest festival of the South-Western Iranians and of the
Achaemenians, and by officially recognizing it. Also the Zoroastrian
composition of some of the older Yashts of which (or at least
of parts of which) a non-Zoroastrian or perhaps even pre-Zoroastrian
nucleus may have already existed among the Magian communities of Media
and Persia as hymns of praise to older Aryan deities or as
mythological songs and epics, may have been connected with this
epoch-making change. It was then that the incorporation of these
materials in the supplemented and enlarged sacred book took place, as
well as the adoption of the said ancient and non-Zoroastrian popular
divinities such as Mithra,
Anahita, Tishtrya,
and Verethraghna (who
were perhaps the Daevas of the early and pure Zoroastrian
faith) into the religion and its revised canon.69
The Afrin Gahambar
or, at any rate, its supplementary part dealing with the
lengths of
the gahs and with the days and months of the season festivals
represents this period, and the basis of it at least must surely have
been composed at this time, i.e. about 441 BC70 Although
the contents of this Afrin are believed to be derived from the Hadokht
Nask of the Avesta, that part of them which concerns the six
seasons of the creation and their length, is repeated more fully in
the cosmogonical chapters of the Gr.
Bundahishn, which no doubt are based on the Damdad
Nask of the lost Avesta. Through comparing a tract of the
pseudo-Hippocratian Greek work (De hebdomadibus) with the
material of the Gr. Bundahishn on microcosm and macrocosm taken
from the said Damdad Nask, Albrecht Götze (Zeitschrift für
Indologie u. Iranistik, ii, 1923, pp. 60 and 167) has proved that
this nask must have been composed not later than the fifth
century BC.71 (Reitzenstein proposes 430 as the lowest
limit, Studien, p. 130 n.). Perhaps the absence of
Mithra, Anahita, etc., in the inscriptions of early Achaemenian kings,
including that of Artaxerxes
I belonging to the early part of his reign, and the appearance of
these deities in the next inscription of any length (that of Artaxerxes
II) can also be explained by this theory,72 i.e. the
conversion of the Achaemenians to Zoroastrianism between the two
dates. The absence of the name of Zoroaster from the books of
Herodotus (composed about 447 BC) and its mention in Alcibiades,
i, of Plato (about 390 BC) may also indicate that the faith of the
Iranian prophet had become the State religion during that interval.73
Further evidence supporting the same theory
The following considerations may help to make the date suggested as
that of the second reform of the calendar more acceptable: --
1. Herodotus, who wrote his book in the early years of the second
half of the fifth century BC, although he speaks of the Egyptian year
and finds it preferable to the more complicated year of the Greeks (ii,
2; Rawlinson's translation, ii, 3), does not mention the Persian
year as having the same simplicity as the Egyptian. It may be inferred
from this omission, as Marquart has pointed out, that Herodotus did
not know the Y.A. calendar of the Persians. Ctesias's mention of the
feast of Mithra in Persia, at which even the king could get
intoxicated,74 is, on the other hand, possible evidence of
the existence of the new calendar to which the festival he thus names
(most probably the well-known Mithrakan or Mithrakana of Strabo)
apparently belonged, in the last years of the fifth century BC when he
was in Persia.75
2. The last of the intercalations (of a month each 120 years) took
place, according to Biruni (AB., pp. 33, 45, 118, and 119) in the
reign of the Sasanian king Yazdegird I (AD 399-420). This was the
seventh intercalation when the seventh month (Mihr) had to be repeated
according to the established rule. On this occasion two successive
intercalations (the seventh and eighth) were carried out together, one
which had already fallen due and the other in anticipation. This
double intercalation had to be effected by repeating the months Mihr
and Aban in the same year, making it a year of fourteen months.
Therefore the epagomenae were placed at the end of Aban, where they
have remained till AD 1006, and in some provinces until much later.
Now the seventh 120-yearly intercalation must necessarily have been on
the 840th year after the institution of the intercalation. As a matter
of fact, the 840th year after 441 BC, the date we have assumed for the
establishment of the vihêjakîk year, is AD 399, which is also
the first year of Yazdegerd's reign. It is true that Biruni is not
consistent in his statements in his different books about the date and
number of the last and double intercalation. Apparently he considers
this intercalation in his above-mentioned book (AB., pp. 33 and 119)
as the eighth and ninth together and he says that all traditions are
unanimous in putting it in the reign of Yazdegird I, but it is to be
implied from his calculations m the Qânûn-i Mas`ûdî
(composed about twenty years later) that this last intercalation was
the seventh and eighth together, and he asserts that it was carried
out during the reign of Firuz (AD 457-84). Nevertheless, there are
reasons for believing that from a chronological point of view, his
first report, in so far as the time is concerned (but not the number),
is accurate, though his last statement may refer to another small
reform possibly effected during the reign of Firuz.76
3. The Mazdayasnian tradition, though it ignores the earlier
Achaemenian kings before Artaxerxes I (Longimanus), refers many times
to the latter monarch (Ardashir diraz-dast) and his successors as good
Zoroastrians. According to the Vohuman
Yasht (II, 16-17), this king "makes the religion current in
the whole world".77 Jackson in his Zoroastrian
Studies (p. 168) says that "concerning the later Achaemenian
rulers everybody is agreed that Artaxerxes I, II, III and Darius
Codomannus were true adherents to the faith of the prophet of ancient
Iran". Therefore it is certainly reasonable to presume that the
adoption and official recognition of the Mazdayasnian calendar was the
work of the first Zoroastrian king of Iran.
4. The feast of Mithra or baga 78 was, no
doubt, one of the most popular if not the greatest of all the
festivals in ancient Iran, where it was celebrated with the greatest
attention. This was originally a pre-Zoroastrian and old Aryan feast
consecrated to the sun god, and its place in the Old-Persian calendar
was surely in the month belonging to this deity. This month was called
Bâgayâdi or Bâgayâdish and almost certainly
corresponded to the seventh Babylonian month Tishrîtu, the
patron of which was also Shamash, the Babylonian sun god.79
This month was, as has already been stated, probably the first month
of the Old-Persian year, and its more or less fixed place was in the
early part of the autumn. The feast was in all probability Old-Persian
rather than Old- or Young-Avestan, and it was perhaps the survival of
an earlier Iranian New Year festival dating from some prehistoric
phase of the Aryo-Iranian calendar, when the year began at the
autumnal equinox. It was connected with the worship of one of the
oldest Aryan deities (Baga-Mithra), of whom traces are found as
far back as in the fourteenth century BC. The fact that Mithra and
similar ancient deities are not mentioned in the Gathas, that they are
strangers to the original and pure religion of Zoroaster, that even
probably they were considered by this religion as
Daevas or demons, and that they were admitted into the
Mazdayasnian religion only in later times as lesser divinities of the
Iranian pantheon,80 their hymns having been incorporated
into the "recent Avesta", might support this thesis. The
month Bâgayâdi was certainly the month in which the feast of Baga
usually or often fell. It was on the 10th day of this month in the
year 522 BC that (according to the Behistun inscription, i, 55) the
Magian usurper Gaumata was killed by Darius and his associates, and
his illegitimate rule was overthrown. According to Herodotus, iii,
79-80 (Rawlinson translation, vol. 2, p. 393), this day was celebrated
later each year as the feast of Magophonia or the day of slaughter of
the Magi, on which day the Magians did not dare to show themselves
abroad. He says that "the Persians observe this day with one
accord, and keep it more strictly than any other in the whole year. It is then that they hold the great festival, which they
call Magophonia", and he asserts that "this day is
the greatest holy day that all Persians alike keep" (AD Godley's
translation, vol. ii, pp. 103-4). It is very probable that the day
chosen by the conspirators for carrying out their plot against the
usurper was the same day as the great national feast of Baga
worship, when the court was expected to indulge in pleasure and was
less on its guard. We may, therefore, conclude that the Magophonia
of Herodotus (and Ctesias) and the festival of Baga worship (or
*Bagayâda according to Marquart's deduction) was in 522 BC on
one and the same day, owing to the said coincidence of dates, as Gray
is inclined to suppose.81 But there is no need to assume
that the two words were identical, the former (Magophonia)
being a misunderstood or misspelt form of the latter (*Bagayâda)
as Marquart has proposed. As a matter of fact, the tenth day of Bâgayâdi
which corresponded to the tenth or eleventh day of the Babylonian Tishrîtu
was in 522 BC on or about autumnal equinox. The tenth day of Tishrîtu
was in that year the 29th of Julian September,82 whereas
the equinox was on the 30th of the same month.83 If Gaumata
was killed on the eve of the festival, this latter can be supposed
then to have been on the 11th of Bâgayâdi, i.e. exactly on
the day of the equinox.84 Therefore it seems to me
reasonable to suppose that the great feast of Baga with which
the later (Y.A.) mithrakana and the modern Mihragan or mihrjân
was certainly identical, was originally the day of the autumnal
equinox. This equinox must then necessarily have fallen on the 16th
day of the Y.A. month Mihr (the seventh month), at the time of the
adoption of that Old-Persian festival in the new Y.A. calendar. This
was, as a matter of fact, exactly the case in the years 445-442,85
when the first of Frawardin was on 17th March, or ten days before the
vernal equinox, and the autumnal equinox on 28th September.
It was most probably about this time that the *bagayâda
feast of the Old-Persian calendar was taken into the Y.A. year and was
renamed Mithrakân. It is very natural to conjecture that this
adoption was part of the calendar reform through which the Y.A.
calendar replaced the system of the Old-Persian time reckoning. Thus
again the Mazdayasnian month containing the feast of Mithra-baga
was named after that deity Mithrahe-Mihr in the Persian
calendar, and for the same reason the corresponding Armenian month
bore the name of Mehekân, the Cappadocian month that of Mithri
and the Khwarazmian month that of Omirê. The Sogdians,
however, kept for this month in their parallel calendar a form of the
Old-Persian name, calling their seventh month bagakânc (Arabicized
faghakân).
Now taking the equinox of autumn as the starting point for the
division of the year into four equal parts, as according to Epping 86
the Babylonians used to do, and putting it on 16th Mihr in one of the
four years between 445 and 441, the conventional solstice day 87
would fall strictly in the middle of Tir, which is the traditional maidyoshahem,
but the real solstice would fall on the 14th or 13th day of the month,
i.e. on one of the famous Tiragan feasts, the Greater or the
Lesser respectively, which may have been connected in origin with this
correspondence. The conventional winter solstice would fall on the
16th or 17th day of the month Dai (the real solstice on 15th Dai),
perhaps corresponding to the feast of Gâv-guthil (?) = ###
which was also on the first day of the gahambar of maidyarem
and paitishahem, the Avestan time of harvest in Iran, would
fall on the 14th September (Julian), i.e. a fortnight before the end
of the summer. In 441 the above-mentioned correspondence was in some
cases perhaps less strict than in the others, but the difference was
in each case only one day.88
It is a curious fact that many of the feasts connected with, and
owing their origin to, the solar seasons and astronomical points of
the year, have been transferred to the vague year, being detached from
the tropic or fixed solar year, and attached to the civil year.
Consequently they have remained in their original places in the
latter, free from the effect of intercalation, and have receded
against the tropic year about one day each four years. But though they
have lost their true and original significance, nevertheless they
continued to be celebrated always as marking the points they had
originally occupied at the time of the official introduction of the
Mazdayasnian calendar.89 Besides Mihragan, Tiragan,
and Gâv-guthil (?) we have in the Persian feast Sada,
in both Adar-jashn, in Ajgâr and two or three other
Khwarazmian festivals, as well as perhaps in the Sogdian Mâkhîrajs
and `Amas khwâreh (?) = ### (all described by Biruni), the
same phenomena. This means that they are symbolic festivals surviving
to mark the original seasonal points of the year, but no longer
corresponding to them. Biruni distinguishes these feasts from the true
season-festivals by calling them non-religious and the latter
religious feasts.90 In spite of losing their original
significance, the former have kept curiously enough some traces of
that character.91 The Sada even literally has
preserved the meaning relating to the original place of that festival,
for the word means "the hundredth", and it was so named
because of its having been originally on the hundredth day of the
Zoroastrian winter which is five months, from the beginning of Aban
to the end of Spandarmad. This feast was on the first day of
the last third of winter, corresponding originally to 20th January
(new style) 92 which is the first day of the second month
of the astronomical winter (Aquarius) and the beginning of the
severest part of the cold season in Iran. The Pahlavi commentary of
the Vendidad (i, 4) expressly says that the month Vohuman (of
course, the vihêjakîk month) is the season of the severest
cold and that it is the heart of the winter. The above facts prove
that the Sada, contrary to Biruni's statement (AB. Istanbul
complete manuscript), was not instituted by Ardashir, but was rather a
feast of much older origin.
It is also interesting to notice that traces of the historical
events connected with *bagayâda or Magophonia, namely
the deliverance of Persia from the yoke of a detested usurper (Gaumata)
by a popular prince (Darius), are preserved (as Marquart has already
remarked) in the Iranian tradition in the form of the legend of the
blacksmith Kavehi and the noble prince Faridoon (Thraetaona),
delivering Iran from the monstrous usurper Azhi-dahaka on the Mihragan
day, as is related by Biruni and others.93 Similarly in the
traditions relating to some of the other famous Iranian festivals, a
vague memory of some ancient historical adventures of national
importance seems to be preserved. For instance, Tiragan (the
13th day of the month Tir) is, according to the traditions, the day on
which the Iranian nation was delivered from the Turanian domination
under Afrasiyab (Franrasyan,94 and Gâv-guthil
(?) or the 16th Dai was the day when Eranshahr was freed from the
Turks and Faridoon returned the cow of Athfiân (Athwya) to its
legitimate owner after dethroning and imprisoning of Bivarasf (Baevaraspa).95
It is at the same time also possible, and even probable, that while
the feast of Baga or the equinox day in the years after 522 BC
did not, of course, regularly fall on the 10th or 11th day of the
Old-Persian month Bâgayâdi, and oscillated between 16th of
the same month and 16th of the Old-Persian month preceding it
(Babylonian Elûl), nevertheless the 10th (or 11th) day of Bâgayâdi
was still kept as another popular feast and was celebrated regularly
in the old Persian luni-solar calendar (presumably from 522 till 441
BC), now not as a festival in honor of Baga or as the beginning
of autumn, but only as the anniversary of the overthrow of Magian
rule. Thus both movable and immovable feasts continued to be observed
side by side until about 441 BC when the Y.A. took the place of the
Old-Persian calendar (the latter ceasing to exist). On this occasion
both feasts were transferred to the Mazdayasnian year, and were fixed
on the corresponding days of this year. The Baga's feast (or *Bagayâda)
became the famous Mihragan (the lesser) on the 16th day of Mihr,
to which it corresponded in 441, and the Magophonia (or as one
can say in modern Persian Maghkushân), the 11th day of Bâgayâdi,
which at that time (441) corresponded exactly to the 21st day of Mihr
(3rd October), became Râm-rûz 96 or Greater Mihragan.
This explains the tradition which makes Râm-rûz the day of
the actual capture of Azhi-dahaka [Zohak] by Faridoon, whereas it
attributes to Mihragan only the spreading of the first news of
the rising of Faridoon against the tyrannical usurper. The feast of Baga
used probably to be celebrated for five days, and Herodotus' story of
five days continuation of the uproar after the Magi was killed, might
be considered as confirmation of this. Since these five days fell
incidentally in 441 just on the interval between this feast and Magophonia
97 the two feasts may have been linked together and made
into one feast of five days with the first and last days as great
festivals. The mention of both feasts by Ctesias 98
separately, however, points to a posterior date for this fusion.99
5. The date of the second reform of the Y.A. calendar when the New
Year's Day was fixed near the vernal equinox, and the practice of the
intercalation of one month each 120 years was instituted, is more
likely to have been a year on which the beginning of the corresponding
Babylonian year (rêsh-shatti) or the great feast connected
with it (Zagmûg-Akitû) fell not far from the same equinox.
Out of the years in the first decade of the second half of the fifth
century BC, which are more or less suitable in other respects, only
the years 441, 446, and 449 agree with this condition. The Babylonian
New Year's Day in 441 was only four days after the equinox day (30th
March), in 449 it was three days after that point (29th March), and in
446 it coincided exactly with the first day of Spring (26th March). In
each of the remaining seven years the interval between the two (Zagmûg
and the equinox) was much longer. For example in 443 this interval was
twenty-six days. Of the three years suitable in this respect, the year
441 possesses other advantages also, as we have seen. Moreover in 441
the Babylonian New Year's Day, if it did not fall on the real equinox,
corresponded according to their own compilation, to their conventional
equinox, which was probably also fixed in the same year on the 30th
March.
6. The feast of Mihragan was, in almost all Persian and
Arabic literature, always generally considered as the first day of
autumn. There are innumerable examples of this, which would take us
too far afield to quote here. This is not only the case in the
writings of the later part of the eleventh and the earlier part of the
twelfth century of the Christian era, when Mihragan had reached
again to the first weeks of autumn, but also in much easier and later
periods one meets with the word used in the same meaning. This popular
meaning given to the word and the feast is, no doubt, reminiscent of
its original place.
7. The Frawardigan feast (Pahlavi Fravartîgân) or
the feast of manes celebrated in memory of the dead, when according to
the Avesta and the Zoroastrian literature the souls of the pious
people (fravashis) visit their former homes, must have been
since the composition of Yasht
13 of the Avesta, at least, identical with the gahambar of hamaspathmaidyem
near the vernal equinox. The gahambars, though probably only
one day originally, were from time immemorial celebrated for five days
by the Zoroastrians, the four preceding days being added to the
principal feast day, as we find in all Mazdayasnian traditions, but
none of them were more than five days. Now if hamaspathmaidyem
and Frawardigan were both originally the same as one of the gahambars,
as this is implied by the above-mentioned verse of the Avesta, then
how is this fact to be reconciled with the assigning of ten days (or
strictly ten nights) in the Avesta (Yt. 13.49) for the "flying of
the souls all around their villages" and with the traditional
practice of the Zoroastrians, who celebrated the feast of manes (Frawardigan,
or perhaps more
correctly Fordîgân) for ten days not only from the Arab
invasion up to the present day, but also in the Sasanian period? 100
Biruni tells us that a controversy having arisen among the
Zoroastrian, as to which of the two pentades, the last five days of
the month preceding the Gatha days or the latter group itself,
was the real Frawardigan, they decided to add both fives
together and to make the Frawardigan ten days, and thus this
feast became, by compromise, longer than it originally was. He states
further that the second five, i.e. the Gatha days or Andargâh
has superiority over the first. This controversy, if it really took
place, could hardly have occurred after the composition of the Frawardin
Yasht, which, as stated above, mentions the ten days of the
souls' visit.
The question can be solved without much difficulty if we suppose
that the final composition of Yasht
13 was posterior to 441 BC, which supposition, owing to the fact
that the reverence of fravashis was in all probability a part
of the popular belief admitted later into the religion, rather than of
pure Zoroastrianism, seems to be reasonable. We may then assume that
the feast of hamaspathmaidyem which was in the last days of
Spandarmad or of the Avestan month corresponding to this perhaps later
name, was mainly a rural festival placed towards the end of the winter
and immediately before the Avestan "summer," and that it was
perhaps connected at the same time with some offering, liturgy, or
some sort of religious ceremony (possibly also some remembrance of the
dead), but that Frawardigan was the name of the five
supplementary days of the year introduced on the model of the Egyptian
epagomenae when the Egyptian system was adopted and the Y.A. calendar
replaced the Old-Avestan. Accordingly these epagomenae called also Andargâh,
Gatha days, Panjak veh, Dûzîtak, Turuftak
and Panjeh Duzdîda (Arabic al-khamsat al-mustariqat)
were originally at the end of the month Adar and immediately before
the month Dai, i.e. exactly where the Egyptian supplementary days
stood. These days were consecrated, as they were in Egypt, to the
reverence of the souls of the departed faithful (fravashis). Later,
when through the second reform (about 441), the epagomenae were
transferred to their well-known place between the end of Spandarmad
and the beginning of Frawardin, some doubt may have arisen as to the
question of the celebration of one of the two consecutive pentads as
the Fravashi's feast. To avoid any negligence in religious duties, the
religious authorities may have added both together and made the Frawardigan
ten days.101 The divergence of opinion on this matter,
however, did not cease, if one is to judge from the different
descriptions given in Pahlavi, Arabic, and Persian books.102
However, the later sources such as the Bundahishn and Biruni's books
consider the last five days of the year, i.e. the Gatha days, as the hamaspathmaidyem gahambar and also the real Frawardigan
perhaps contrary to their origin but as a natural consequence of the
6th gahambar coming necessarily immediately before Frawardin.
The Young-Avestan Calendar after the Second Reform
The Zoroastrian vague or civil year continued to be in general use
in Persia among the people, from its introduction down to the Islamic
period. It was adopted in very ancient times, and perhaps immediately
after its official introduction into the Persian empire, by a good
many of the neighboring peoples. In Khwarazm its use goes back
probably even to still older times, when the year still began with the
month Dai, as the above-mentioned order and length of the Khwarazmian gahambars
show. The use of the name Faghakân for the Sogdian month
corresponding to the Persian month Mihr is also a proof of the
antiquity of the use of this calendar by that people. The same is true
of the Armenians, whose tenth month is called Marieri, so named
according to Marquart after maidyarem, certainly at a time when
this gahambar still fell in that month, that is before 321 BC.
Their last month is called Hrotic < Frordigân the
famous Frawardigan feast which was originally at the end of
this month before the said date.103 The name of the Persian
month Frawardin may have been adopted later when the feast of the
souls stood at the end of this month, i.e. between 321 and 201 BC. The
name of the fourth month in some of the above-mentioned calendars
(e.g. Tir and not Tishtrya), however, may indicate that their model
was the Persian copy of the Avestan month, and hence that they were
introduced in those countries after 441 BC. Though the use of Y.A.
year declined in Islamic times among the Muhammadan Persians, it did
not disappear wholly, and it was still used in some districts in the
early years of the present century. The Y.A. calendar to which this
year belonged was the official means of time reckoning in the Sasanian
period and has continued in use as the religious calendar of the
Zoroastrians down to the present day. The only changes which this
calendar has undergone are: (1) the removal, in Fars and some other
provinces by order of the Bûyid kings (possibly Bahâ'ad-dawleh) in
AD 1106, of the Andargâh from the end of the month Aban, where
it stood since the last intercalation, to the end of the year, and (2)
the omission of the intercalation after the beginning of the fifth
century (except for one intercalation, but this in the civil year) by
a limited community, namely the ancestors of the Indian Parsis, most
probably in 1131-2 (or 1126).
The Double Intercalation
But if on the one hand Biruni's report as to the double
intercalation during the reign of Yazdegird I or of Fîrûz, which
involves the repetition of Mihr and Aban, in one year, was based on an
authentic tradition, and if on the other hand the passage of the
Pahlavi commentary of the Vendidad (i, 4) relating to the
coldest month of winter 104 really means that the vihêjakîk
month Vohuman corresponded to the month Shahrewar of the civil year,
the reconciliation of these two facts will not be easy.105
For, as Paruck has remarked,106 the correspondence between
the vihêjakîk month Vohuman and the civil month Shahrewar
implies the correspondence of the vihêjakîk Frawardin with
the civil Aban, whereas the double intercalation involves the
assumption that before that operation the civil month Mihr and after
it, the civil month Adar, corresponded with the vihêjakîk
month Frawardin. Therefore the civil Aban could never have concorded
with the latter.
The explanation may be sought in the fact that while the purpose of
the intercalation was originally to bring back the 15th day of the vihêjakîk
month Tir to the summer solstice (maidyoshahem) and the other gahambars
to their original astronomical places, the popular belief in the
equinoctial origin of the New Year, according to Mazdayasnian
cosmogony, had gained ground by the fourth century of the Christian
era and become generally accepted. Therefore when the seventh cycle of
intercalation came to an end in 399, and a new intercalation (the
seventh) was due, those responsible for this operation noticed that
this intercalation, which ought to have made the first day of the vihêjakîk
year (the first day of religious Frawardin) correspond with the first
day of Aban of the civil (Oshmurtîk) year, would not bring it
back to the vernal equinox. They found that this correspondence and
consequently the right time for the intercalation (if it was to bring
the beginning of the ecclesiastical year to the said equinox) was
about AD 384. As this time had already passed, and the next occasion,
namely about 508, when the first day of Adar would correspond to the
equinox, had not yet come, they decided to effect a double
intercalation of two months, one for the omitted one of the past and
the other in anticipation of the next. Adding two months, i.e. a
second Mihr and a second Aban to the (vihêjakîk) year they
moved the epagomenae to the end of the civil Aban, where it has
remained. The church, however, apparently still considered for some
time the civil Mihr (and not Aban) as corresponding to the vihêjakîk
Frawardin, as this was in fact the real position. After some time, say
seventy or eighty years, in the reign of Firuz, it may have been
decided to consider the epagomenae the end of the vihêjakîk
year, and the Mobeds may have resolved to adopt this officially. This
decision, or the theoretical adjustment, may be the source of the
tradition attributing the last intercalation to the reign of Firuz,
reported by Biruni in his later book as mentioned above. From a report
in the book Az-zîj-al-Hâkimî or the astronomical tables
composed (about the end of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh
century) by the famous astronomer Ibn Yûnis (Paris, fonds arabe
2495 fol. 65b-66a), it appears that astronomical observations were
undertaken by the Persians some 360 years before the famous
observations under the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma'mûn about AD 833. This
takes the date of the Persian observations back to about 472 and the
reign of Firuz. This may also have had some connection with the
above-mentioned reform or adjustment in that reign. If, however; both
of Biruni's reports as to the last intercalation, according to one of
which it took place in the reign of Yazdegird I, and according to the
other in the reign of Firuz, should prove to have been based on old
and authentic sources, it seems to me this can only be explained by
supposing two kinds of fixed year to have been in use. This means that
while the stable year, which was most probably a sidereal year, was
kept fixed as strictly as possible by some circles (probably by the
Mobeds for religious purposes) it was counted by others (perhaps by
the State for financial matters) roughly as 365.25 days, like the
Julian year of the Romans. Consequently an intercalation of one month
each 120 vague years was necessary to keep this last kind of year
fixed, whereas to stabilize the first one (held to be about 365 d. 6
h. 13 m.) the intercalation of one month each 116 (or 115) years would
have sufficed. Starting from the year 441 BC the seventh 120th yearly
intercalation (which was at the same time a double one) ought to have
taken place, as stated above, in AD 399, i.e. the beginning of the
reign of Yazdegird, but the seventh 116th (or sometimes 115th) yearly
intercalation would have been executed about thirty years earlier, and
the eighth one would have been effected about AD 485, i.e. towards the
end of the reign of Firuz.
The existence of different estimates for the length of the solar
year in Persia may be inferred from the different statements of the Bundahishn
on this point. This book gives the said length in chapter 5 (Nyberg, Pahlavi
Texte ..., p.29) as 365 d. 5 h. and some minutes (or a fraction of
the hour).107 In chapter 25, however, the same book
contains the statement that the length of the year or "the
revolution of the sun from Aries to the end of the months" was
365 d. 6 h. and some minutes. This last estimation is also given in
the Denkard
(ibid., pp. 19 and 31). According to Biruni (AB., p. 119) the length
of the year was considered by the Persians to be 365 d. 6 h. 13 m. and
according to Abû Ma'shar of Balkh (ninth century) quoted by Sajzî
(Brit. Mus. MS. Or. 1316, fol. 79) the fraction was held by them to be
6 h. 12 m. 57 s. 36 th. The same is given by Kharaqi (twelfth century)
in his book Muntahâ al-idrâk (Berlin Ms.).108
It was according to Hamza of Isfahin (tenth century) 6 h. 12 m. 9
s. (AB., p. 52) and according to 'Abd ar-rahmân al-Khâzin (twelfth
century) in his Az-zîj al-mu`tabar as-Sanjarî (Vatican Ms.
fol. 21) only 6 h. 12 m. This fraction which agrees nearly with the
fraction of the sidereal year as calculated by the Babylonians, namely
6 h. 13 m. 43 s. would need the intercalation of one month each 116
years and sometimes 115 years (if the fraction should be taken as 6 h.
13 m.). As a matter of fact, this kind of intercalation (1l6-yearly)
was practiced in ancient Iran according to Kitâb al-awâ`il of
'Askarî quoted by Safadî in his al-wâfi bil-wafayât (JA. 10ième
série, tome xvii, 1911, p. 278). The same process is reported
also by the author of the Ta'rîkh-i Qum (of which the Arabic
original was composed about 984), by al-Kharaqî, and by al-Khâzin in
their above-mentioned books, and by Biruni (AB., p. 11).
The suggested existence of two fixed years, however improbable it
may be, would explain not only the two different dates of the last
intercalation, but also the two different periods of 120 and 116 years
for the operation given in the above-mentioned sources. The tradition
regarding the stabilization of the year by the government by means of
intercalation for keeping a fixed time for "opening the tax
collection" may also confirm the existence of a fixed year in the
affairs of the State.
Note. -- The theory proposed above, of the two reforms of
the calendar necessarily involves the assumption that on the occasion
of the second reform the epagomenae, though they were put at the end
of the month Spandarmad, were not removed in the same year from the
end of the month Adar where they had stood up to that time. This means
that in that year both months had at their end five supplementary
days. It is not incredible to attribute such accuracy, which was also
necessary for keeping the strict correspondence existing at that time
between the Persian and the Egyptian months and days, to the king's
astronomers in Babylon, though the above point was neglected on the
occasion of the first intercalation (due in 321 BC).
* * * * *
The history and development of the Iranian calendar may be
recapitulated according to the theory laid down in this article as
follows: --
An original Aryan or the earliest Iranian calendar, belonging to
the period when that race was possibly inhabiting the most northerly
steppes between the Oxus and the Jaxartes, a land of severe cold, may
be inferred from the Avestan verse (Vendidid,
1.2-3) which makes the year consist of a winter of ten months and
a summer of two (still rather cold) months. At a later period,
probably under the influence of a milder climate in the regions
occupied by the same people in their southward movement, the adoption
of a new division of the year, into two equal parts from one solstice
to the other, similar to the Vedic ayanas, can be deduced from
the two old season festivals, marking the beginning and the middle of
the year, and the fi |
